Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Evidence-Based Practice in the CCHS Library

I recently had an intense discussion with a colleague about evidence-based practice. It got me thinking.

Dr. Ross Todd (director of Rutgers University’s Center for International Scholarship in School Libraries) says "you will know that you have achieved evidence-based practice when you are able to provide convincing evidence that answers these questions:

What differences do my school library and its learning initiatives make to student learning outcomes?

What are the differences, the tangible learning outcomes and learning benefits, of my school library?"

How do I achieve this? Using Todd's guidelines I conducted a quick self-survey:

Lesson plans tied to state standards and outcomes - OK, got that

Benchmarks - how do I create ways to assess whether or not students are hitting benchmarks? Do I have a firm handle on what my benchmarks should be? Hmm.

Accountability - collaboration, examination of progress and practice - am working hard on this

Where I trip up is in developing effective student assessments that can be conducted without adding paper or requiring anything from the class teacher. In a perfect world I would be collaborating on final assessments, but we aren't there yet. I am toying with trying out PollEveryWhere.com for quick, dip stick style assessments after a class completes a session in the library. I saw Hall Davidson, Director of Discovery Education Network, demonstrate this at the most recent MassCue Conference. This is a free web-app that allows you to create a poll and have respondents participate with their cell phones. I believe students would get a bang out of this, but will this yield the type of data I need?